2009 Young Clinician Award

NEWTON, Mass. (September 2, 2009) – Newton-Wellesley Hospital Surgeon Claire Cronin, MD is a recipient of the Young Clinician Award given by the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology to outstanding doctors who also want to pursue a career in research. The CIMIT-administered award is worth $50,000 and is funded by Johnson & Johnson’s Corporate Office of Science and Technology.

"Dr. Cronin is a talented researcher as well as a skillful clinician," said CIMIT Executive Director John Parrish, MD. "This award will help her to pursue her study in a very important area of medical need." CIMIT is a non-profit consortium of Boston-area teaching hospitals and engineering schools that provides innovators with resources to explore, develop and implement novel technological solutions for today’s most urgent healthcare problems.

The goal of Dr. Cronin’s research, Digital Breast Lumpectomy Imaging, is to develop a way to make lumpectomy pathology report specimens digital so that better decisions can be made about treatment. The accuracy of reporting the correct margin will lead to a lower risk of cancer recurrence. It will also result in less tissue being removed unnecessarily and decrease the breast deformity after surgery.

According to Dr. Cronin, as lumpectomies become the standard of care for most breast cancers, the pathology report becomes increasingly valuable to describe the tumor, and specifically the margins. The goal in breast surgery is to remove the cancerous tissue with negative margins. When a close margin is identified, the surgeon usually recommends that the patient return for more surgery. This occurs 30% of the time nationwide when lumpectomies are performed.

A member of the Newton-Wellesley Hospital medical staff since 2000, Dr. Cronin was appointed Clinical Director of the Auerbach Breast Center in 2003. She earned her medical degree at Tufts University School of Medicine and completed her internship and residencies at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Dr. Cronin’s clinical interests are in breast cancer surgery, endocrine surgery, and advanced laparoscopic surgery. She resides in Lexington with her husband and two children.

Newton-Wellesley Hospital is a full system member of Partners HealthCare System, Inc. (PHCS), a nonprofit organization that includes acute care hospitals Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's/Faulkner Hospitals, The North Shore Medical Center, and specialty hospitals McLean Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, as well as Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare, and the community-based doctors and hospitals of Partners Community HealthCare, Inc.

Newton-Wellesley Hospital provides a wide range of services, including medical, surgical, obstetrical, orthopaedic, neonatal, pediatric and psychiatric care. Newton-Wellesley has been serving its community for over a century. The medical staff of the Hospital includes nearly 1,000 physicians practicing a full range of specialties. NWH is a major teaching hospital for Tufts University School of Medicine and also has established post-graduate training programs for Harvard Medical School residents.